Friday, December 26, 2014

1) Lack of women.2) Sudden onset of stronghold-wide madness.1) Dissatisfied with imperfections in their stone-carving that only they could see, dwarfs petrified themselves one by one in order to create perfect testament to Dwarfen skill and sacrifice.2) They just dug down, and down, and down, and down, and down...3) From the beginning, the Dwarfen calendar only ever recorded up to a set day. When that day came, all dwarfs committed ritual suicide. Their time was over.4) Gold-lust. All dwarfs refused to give anything of value to any other dwarf. No-one backed down. Economy collapsed. Everyone starved.5) Entire hold attempted to live as Breatharians. Eschewed all sustenance. Everyone starved.6) All killed in militant pogrom against indecency.3) The king lost the mandate of heaven. Infighting, madness and death quickly ensued.4) Natural disaster.1) Earthquake. 2) Flood.3) Meteor.4) Volcano.5) The great artificers that made the Dwarfs grew tired of them, and brushed them aside.6) The dwarfs found something even older than they.1) Gigantic egg. No-one knows what it hatched.2) UFO. 50% chance as "Alien" 50% chance as "The Thing"3) Entrance to Hell.4) Philosophical quandary impossible to reconcile with Dwarfen attitudes.7) Ancient Dwarfen Enemy.1) Intelligent, evil fire. Can be fought like real fire, cannot be fought like a fire elemental. Smoulders once all nearby intelligent creatures are dead and blackened. Waits. Reignites when intelligent creatures approach once more. Can cast Intelligent Fireball on self once per hour.2) Dog sized bumblebees. Swarm around target and vibrate, causing suffocation damage and combustion. Honey acts as healing potion for those that can stomach it.3) Mould men.4) The minions of the Rust King.5) Bears.6) The living wood. Ents, thornchildren, vines everywhere - and blood druids.7) Gore Wizards.8) Golem / Automaton servant uprising.8) Roll Twice. Accept both results.

WHY CAN NONE RETURN? Roll 1d6

1) Near-total success of automated stronghold self-destruct procedures.2) Entire stronghold transported to unknown location. Canyon ripped through mountain where hold should be.3) Dwarfen industry left entire surrounding area blasted toxic/radioactive wasteland.4) Dwarfen death curse lies on the hold and surrounding area. Can only be ended by finding and disrupting the curse-runes.1) None can eat or drink within sight of the mountain.2) All near the hold are turned to stone under the gaze of the sun.3) Terrible race of monster birthed by curse. (As LotFP Summon spell)4) All sighting the mountain save VS magic or become obsessed with the construction of a gigantic machine, immediately dropping everything to join all others who have failed save previously.5) Stronghold has been repopulated by non-aggressive but isolationist colonists. 50% chance hold is now used as honeypot by evil underground civilisation to trap entire village every few decades or so in order to restock hellish gladiator pits.1) Dwarf obsessed cult2) Dinosaurs3) Stronghold now an "elephant-graveyard" / undead city for non-dwarf race.6) Ancient Evil has made the hold its lair1) Elephantine housefly with vorpal tarsus of tasting. Spawns maggots in corpses. Maggots have hit points and spells as birthing corpse.2) Everything appears fine, but the hold is now home to hundreds of large white mountain goats. The goats are reverse were-goats. And will secretly transform into naked raging beserkers and attempt to kill the party with stone knives. These beserkers will have no physical indication that they are actually goats. Goats in goat form will act meek and unintelligent whenever they are aware of being observed.3) Warring evil liches. The liches spend their time crafting terrible monstrosities of gore and shadowflame. Every time they do this the walls shake and the doom track will count one more step. When the track reaches zero something more terrible than either the monstrosities or the liches is spawned deep within the hold. It will seek to destroy every other creature in the hold.4) Huge creature that initially appears to be incarnation of party cleric's god, but soon reveals itself to be a vile imposter. Still outrageously powerful with supernatural abilities that seem strangely close to divine.5) Formless demon has built itself a body out of old dwarfen coins. Towering colossus of copper, sliver and gold. Can sense coins and cause them to amalgamate and fight (tearing their way out of pouches and backpacks, choking whoever they can find). HD and damage increase the more coins available to form spontaneous evil coin golem. Being turned into golems reduces coins value by 20-40%6) Large, invincible, runic stone turtle. Can swim through stone and earth. Has a runic phylactery hidden in the hold for each rune on its shell. They must all be destroyed in order to stop it permanently.